


i broke the night's primeval bars

by sxldato



Category: Death Note
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canonical Character Death, Depersonalization, Dissociation, Existential Crisis, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Loss of Faith, Not Everything Gets Fixed, Other, Religious Guilt, Resurrection, Self-Hatred, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Voodoo, don't let me create AUs, i've never written 6k words so fast in my entire life, mello isn't a dude fucking fight me, so i don't know what i wanted to accomplish with this tbh, this AU is only slightly less sad then the canon plot, what even is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3444248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxldato/pseuds/sxldato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU in which Matt can communicate with the dead and resurrects Mello after their untimely death. This creates more problems than it solves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i broke the night's primeval bars

**Author's Note:**

> don't ask me what this is it's just the biggest denial fic in the universe  
> i will not let these nerd children die ok. they didn't die. it didn't happen. fuck off  
> unbeta'd because why the fuck would i reread something i've been working on nonstop for the past three or four days like honestly guys let's be real  
> title is from "The Call" by Rupert Brooke, which I will put at the end because it's a beautiful poem and highly relevant to this AU

He didn’t think he’d ever appreciated the hard, rough surface of concrete more than he was appreciating it right now. Everything was a blur, coming at him in waves, and for a few moments—short enough to only be the result of waking from a deep sleep rather than concussion-induced amnesia, but long enough for it to cause fear—he couldn’t remember his name. Any of them.

He let himself lie there as memories trickled back in to his mind and the pieces sorted themselves out. This was a city street. There was police tape everywhere and police cars were blocking off the roads, but the scene looked deserted of people. He was curled up on the ground next to his car, and as his eyes focused, he could see the sporadic shower of bullet holes in the driver’s door.

That was weird, he thought dully, because if he was _outside_ his car, and _it_ suffered that much damage, then…

The pool of blood surrounding his body must have been his.

His brain function was not currently at its prime, but he was still able to count sixteen bullet wounds—one of which had nailed him right above his eyebrow.

He was a smart guy, and the third smartest person he knew. So logically, this made absolutely no sense. A bullet to the head meant instant death a solid ninety-nine percent of the time, and that one percent involved a coma and a lot of serious surgery and treatment. But here he was, still right where he’d been shot, having received no medical attention at all, and feeling kind of okay.

The solid road beneath him was a comfort as he turned to his side and retched, blood spurting from his lips and dripping down his chin.

So he wasn’t exactly _okay_. He felt like hell. But he also wasn’t dead, and that definitely said something.

His rationale was starting to kick in, and first thing’s first: he needed to get the hell out of this crime scene.

He pushed himself up, grabbing the handle of the car door as he threw himself into the driver’s seat. One of the lenses to his goggles was totally busted, but he put them on anyways. He found his keys in one of his bloodied coat pockets and stuck them in the ignition, savoring the sound of his car revving to life. With pale, shaking fingers, he reached over and turned the dial on the radio until he found something that wasn’t static.

This, he decided, was what the end of the world looked like; dead people not staying dead, authority nowhere to be found, the car radio playing The Rolling Stones, and the night sky absent of any stars.

He found a pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment and lit one up. It probably wasn’t the best idea, considering there were holes punched in his lungs, but nothing about this was making sense, so who the fuck cared?

He pushed the gearshift into drive and slammed his foot down on the accelerator.

“Hospital?” He muttered to himself, swerving through an intersection to make a sharp left. He coughed into his elbow and his shirtsleeve came away spattered with red. “… Yeah, hospital.”

+

The man at the reception desk in the emergency room screamed when he walked in, and he felt a little bad about causing such a commotion, but what was he supposed to do? There was no way to cover up the fact that he’d been shot sixteen times, no matter how good Covergirl concealer was supposed to be.

“I could, uh—I could use some stitches, I think?” He said, watching as the receptionist launched for the phone and began speaking frantically at people on the other line. There were definitely people taking pictures; he never thought he’d be Internet famous, at least not before Mello.

Mello. Fuck. He hoped him going down in a hail of bullets had been able to buy Mello some time. He almost considered calling them, but then he was being pushed onto a stretcher and rushed down the hallway.

“I, wait—hey, I know this isn’t prison, but can I get one phone call first?”

An oxygen mask was placed over his face and someone was sticking needles in his arm.

Breathe deeply and count back from one hundred, they told him, and before he got to ninety-eight, he slipped out of consciousness.

+

The second time he woke up that day went much better than the first, although there weren’t many ways for anything to be worse than waking up in the middle of the street when you should be dead. He did, however, feel incredibly nauseous, and his spine was not happy about having to be used as he rolled over and vomited into the trash bin next to the bed.

“No blood,” he said, closing his eyes as he waited for the room to stop pretending to be a rollercoaster. “So far, so not-as-terrible.”

“Sir?”

Sir. Holy shit, was that him? “Are you talking to me? ‘Cause I’m—I’ve never been knighted by the Queen before, I’m not…”

“The sedatives should wear off soon; try to relax.” A petite woman with a little bob of black hair and hospital scrubs stood next to him, keeping one of her gloved hands on his back. “Nausea is normal when coming out of surgery, but it will pass.”

“Surgery?” He slurred. “Surgery for what?”

“You had multiple bullet wounds—we needed to remove the bullets and stitch you up. The punctures in your lungs and brain took a lot of intensive care.” The nurse looked very concerned, and he felt a little relieved that someone was worried about him instead of asking why he’d been assisting a kidnapping or saying that he deserved what he’d gotten.

“I should have died… shouldn’t I have?”

“Well, yes,” the nurse conceded as she helped him lie back down. “We’re still not quite sure why you didn’t die. All scientific reason says you should have, but here you are.”

This wasn’t clearing anything up at all. “Yeah, here I am.”

She patted his hand gently. “You’re a very, very lucky man.”

He nodded, still feeling queasy and dazed.

“We couldn’t find your records in the data bases,” she continued. “So we weren’t able to notify any next of kin that might be in your emergency contact information. Is there anyone we should call to let them know you’re here?”

“I—yes, there’s somebody… but you gotta let me call them, okay? Just let me call them—“

“Sir, you need to rest.”

He hadn’t even realized he was trying to get out of bed until he was being pushed back into it. The effort was a strain on his body, and he was out of breath quite fast. “I… I gotta call them… they probably… probably think I’m dead…”

“You did _almost_ die,” the nurse pointed out.

“Okay, but… that’s different from _actually_ dying… Like, I _almost_ died two weeks ago, when I microwaved a piece of lasagna with a fork in it… I _almost_ die a lot. _Actually_ dying is different.”

The nurse did not look like she was in the mood for his bullshit, but she gave him a glass of orange juice and a few crackers, so he figured they were still on good terms.

“If you give us the person’s phone number, we can call them for you—“

“No,” he said immediately, resting his empty cup in his lap. “No, they’d hate that. They wouldn’t want you guys to have their phone number. If I can’t call them, nobody should call them, okay?”

The nurse nodded. “I understand.”

He exhaled, allowing himself to sink fully into the pillows. “When can I get outta here?”

“Despite the critical condition you arrived here in, you seem to be recovering abnormally quick.” She took the cup from him and set it on a tray that jutted out from the foot of the bed. “Again, we… don’t exactly know how this is possible. But we might be able to have you released tomorrow morning.”

“That’s not soon enough.”

“Sir—“

“They’re worried about me, I know they are, and I gotta let them know I’m okay--”

“Slow down your breathing for me, alright? Inhale and exhale on beats of two.”

He glanced over at the heart rate monitor, watching the sharp zigzags slowly taper out into a regular pace. “But… they need me.”

The nurse’s hand combed his hair back out of his face. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find them once you leave. Just rest now—you’ll see them soon, I promise.”

The exhaustion he’d been fighting finally swept over him like a soft, heavy blanket, and his eyes fluttered shut as he thought of angel blond hair and shallow tones of blue.

+

He left the hospital the next day like the nurse had said—not because they thought he was well enough to leave, but because they couldn’t legally hold him there if he didn’t require any more medical attention. They said they wanted to “run some tests,” see if they could figure out why he didn’t die, but he didn’t want any part of that. Some stones were better left unturned, after all, and he was perfectly content with not knowing the fancy scientific reason for something he already kind of knew the real answer to.

Mello had told him about shinigami. He knew they were lazy, good-for-nothing creatures of the night that gained immortality the same way hyenas found food. Scavengers. They used death to their advantage, but only when they could be bothered to.

So maybe there was some sort of fluke in his death. His name hadn’t been written in the death note; he’d gone down in a totally natural way, if being shot over a dozen times counted as natural. Could it be possible for there to have been a blip in the Reaper’s radar? Had the event of his physical death not reached the eyes of the higher ups, and therefore no one had followed through to take him?

Was he really so invisible that even omnipresent gods didn’t know if he was living or dead?

He could have an existential crisis later. He had more important things to do.

+

_“This is Mello. I’m probably doing something more important than answering the phone. If you have information you gotta dump somewhere, leave a message and either I or Matt will get back to you. If this is Near: stop calling me, you literal piece of shit.”_

He swore under his breath and snapped his phone shut. He’d been trying for the last ten minutes to get something other than a voicemail, and he was starting to fear the worst had happened. Dread settled cold and hard in his chest, making it hard to breathe.

Driving himself to the hospital in a vehicle featured in a recent crime scene had been stupid. He couldn’t use it again, not unless he wanted to be caught and killed a second time.

Running in his condition also seemed like a terrible idea, but he was gonna do it anyway.

After kind of almost puking on his shoes from overexertion, he found the nearest subway entrance and caught a train just before it left the station.

Sitting there quietly in a practically deserted subway car, watching the world race past outside the windows while his best friend waited for him somewhere, dead or alive, felt disturbingly surreal. His brain was on automatic at this point, because the rest of him couldn’t keep up, couldn’t process all that had happened. The key was to focus on one thing at a time, and right now that one thing was finding Mello.

He was not a religious man, but he found himself praying in that grungy subway car, trying to make a connection to a god he wasn’t sure could hear him.

+

The church was in ruins. Like his own crime scene, there was police tape everywhere, but no actual police. Only one woman stood in front of the mess, talking low and fast into her cell phone.

“They didn’t _fake_ their death, Near, I watched them take the body… that could have been faked with some sort of drug, yes, but—Near, _listen to me_. The autopsy report showed signs of a heart attack, alright? Kira got to them. They’re gone—I’m sorry.”

The earth beneath him suddenly fell away and he stumbled, trying to keep himself upright as his entire world was falling apart. He’d been too late; Mello was dead.

The woman shoved her phone into her pocket and turned away from the church, her eyes widening as they landed on him. “Matt?”

“… You’re the woman Mello’s been talking to?”

“Yes, I’m Halle.” She still looked suspicious. “And you’re supposed to be dead.”

Fury he had no right to feel at her filled his chest, and he grabbed her by the lapels of her suit jacket. “ _You_ were supposed to keep them safe!” He shouted. “They trusted you!”

The judo flip he received did not do wonders for the stitches all over his body, and he cried out as his back met the ground. Tears sprung to his eyes, and he didn’t know if they were from pain or grief or both.

“We were all in this together,” he managed, choosing to ignore the way his voice broke. “And how is it that _you_ were the only one who got out intact? We shouldn’t have trusted you, not when you were working with Near, too—“

“Near has nothing to do with this.”

“You were talking to him on the phone thirty fucking seconds ago!”

“Are you really so unconditionally loyal to Mello that you refuse to see Near’s side of things?”

“… I mean, yeah.”

Halle shook her head. “He wanted to know the state of things, wanted to know what exactly happened to cause Mello’s death. He didn’t _want_ Mello dead; he didn’t want Mello getting hurt at all.”

“Well, look how great _that_ turned out.”

“Blame Near all you want, but stop acting like a child,” Halle snapped. “Mello’s dead because we _all_ screwed up, including Mello themself. But you have a way to fix this. I know you do; they told me.”

Matt’s rapid heartbeat slowed. “You—you don’t expect me to—“

“You love them.”

“Are you really throwing that sentiment in my face right now?”

“You’d do anything for them.”

“Yes, but I’ve never—“ Matt struggled to his feet as he tried to wrap his head around what she was suggesting. “Jesus Christ, Halle, I’ve never _raised the dead_.”

Talking to ghosts was different. Speaking to people beyond the veil was something that came naturally, a gift of sorts. Reaching past that veil and pulling someone back into the mortal world? That took serious skill—skill that Matt wasn’t sure he had.

Was that why he hadn’t died? Could he move between the land of the living and dead as he pleased? That would definitely be something worth looking into.

Halle was waiting for him to give a solid answer, and he hastily tried to come up with one. “I—I guess I could… I could try?”

Halle grinned. She had a very nice smile, sort of like she knew when the world was going to end. “Good. Do you need the body?”

He really wished he could say no. He didn’t want to see Mello dead. It was hard enough just hearing about it. “Yeah, probably.”

“I’ll get them from the morgue and drop them off at your apartment.”

“You can’t seriously be planning on hauling a body bag all the way up the stairs, can you?”

“Is there a dumbwaiter?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll use that.”

A shiver ran down Matt’s spine at the thought of Mello’s body going up in that tiny lift. “They’re gonna fucking kill us.”

“But that means they’ll be alive, won’t it?”

“… Yeah.” Matt laughed dryly. “Yeah, I guess it will.”

+

The key to bringing back the dead, he decided, was vaporwave music and a fuckton of weed.

He hadn’t done something like this in months—not the smoking weed part; he’d done that two days ago.

Did he know what he was doing? Sort of. Searching through the bowels of Wikipedia and using a lot of his old clichéd books had given him a better idea of what he was supposed to do. He’d spoken to ghosts, come into contact with so-called spirits of the night; but making them alive, making them _stay_ alive for more than ten minutes… he was inexperienced, and a little scared.

But this was Mello, and god knew he was willing to risk it all for them. He’d already done it once before.

He only vaguely knew Latin, only vaguely knew what he was saying. He was good at talking to spirits and understanding their garbled language. Pulling a Frankenstein on his best friend was much harder than translating words from someone who sounded like an adult in _Charlie Brown_. He could not, _would_ not fuck this up.

Mello’s body lay in the middle of the room as Matt threw miscellaneous herbs and spices over them while muttering incantations. Halle had sent them up the dumbwaiter, as she’d said. Taking Mello out of the body bag was not something Matt had ever envisioned himself doing; but it had happened, and he chose not to think about it, mostly because he was prone to puking and crying if he focused on it too much.

Mello was going to be so pissed, but it was something Matt could live with.

The fresh burns from the fire were slowly sealing themselves up from the sandy grains of spices, but the old scar remained. However, Mello still looked pale. Matt kept reciting the words, kept taking drags from his joint (it was his fifth one and he probably should have stopped at his third), let vaporwave wash over him, keep him calm.

The sun was low in the sky by the time Matt saw color creep back into Mello’s cheeks.

“Holy—holy shit, yes, please please _please_ —“ Matt fell to his knees next to Mello’s body, watching as Mello’s heart sputtered to life and their chest rose with a great heave.

Mello’s eyes shot open and they sat bolt upright, clutching their chest, coughing violently. Coughing quickly turned to retching, and Matt helped steady them as they gagged and choked on soot and ash.

“Jesus, why do I feel like the devil fucked me in the ass?” They wheezed, and Matt’s heart soared.

“Mello, oh my god,” he breathed, the initial shock wearing off and allowing him to pull Mello into a tight embrace. “You’re okay, I can’t believe it, you’re actually here.”

“Matt?” Mello pulled away, looking relieved but confused. Their hands were trembling as they cupped around Matt’s jawline. “You—I thought you were dead.”

Matt grinned and shrugged; he hoped Mello would ignore the tears in his eyes. “I thought so, too.”

“But how—“

“It doesn’t matter right now.” Matt leaned in and pressed his lips to theirs in a soft kiss. “All that matters is that you’re here.”

Mello’s brows furrowed, and they dropped their hands from Matt’s face. “Was I… was I dead?”

It wasn’t like Matt could lie, for two reasons. The first was that Mello would figure it out no matter what he did, and the second was that he was objectively terrible at lying to Mello. “Well, yeah, sort of, but you’re not anymore—“

The speed at which confusion was replaced with indignation in Mello’s eyes was rather remarkable. “You used your satanic shit—“

“It’s not satanic, it’s _voodoo_ —“

“—to bring me back to life?”

“I—“

“It’s a yes or no question,” Mello said, their voice lethally quiet. “Don’t fuck with me, Matt; did you or did you not?”

He hadn’t exactly realized just _how_ pissed Mello was going to be, and he could tell that this wasn’t going to go the way he’d wanted it to. “… Yeah, I did.”

Mello looked like they wanted to vomit, and Matt decided that this, right now, was the time for him to try and save himself before Mello completely lost their shit.

“Listen, okay? I’m sorry, I just needed you back, and Halle gave me the idea. You know I’ve got a knack for this stuff, and I figured there wasn’t anything I had left to lose because you were already gone. It wasn’t fair how you died, it shouldn’t have happened—“

“It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t fair!” Mello shouted abruptly. Their voice was hoarse and weak, but they still managed to carry their rage in their tone. “Death isn’t supposed to be fair! You know what it _is_ supposed to be? _Permanent!_ ”

Matt was floored. He had not prepared himself for this at all, and now he was seriously regretting it. He should have known how angry Mello would be, should have prepared himself for the consequences of bringing back someone who had such a strong faith in God. “So you’re saying you would have rathered I left you dead?”

“I’m saying what’s dead should stay dead, and no matter how we feel about each other, I’m no exception.” Mello struggled to stand, stumbled, and Matt caught them.

“I did this for you,” Matt protested.

Mello’s eyes were cold. “No, no, you did this for _you_. This isn’t right, Matt, you can’t _fuck_ with the world order like this!” They pushed Matt away, staggering to the door. “I don’t care if it wasn’t a natural death, I don’t care if I died earlier than I was meant to. Do you know what would happen if people brought the dead back every time someone died young?”

“… Am I supposed to answer that—“

“It would be fucking _chaos_. You remember _The Purge?_ It would be like that, except it would be _all the time_.”

“I think comparing this to _The Purge_ is overstating things a little—“

“My point,” Mello cut him off, “is that you’re not supposed to mess with dead people. You fucked up big time, and I don’t know how, but this is gonna come back to bite you hard in the ass one day.”

“Mello—“

The door slammed shut, and Matt was alone.

“God dammit.”

+

He wasn’t sure when Mello came back because he fell asleep on the couch while trying to wait up for them. When he woke up the next morning, though, they were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee and looking very, very tired.

“Hey,” he said sleepily, stretching his back as he stood and made his way over to them. “When’d you get back?”

Mello swallowed their mouthful of coffee. “Late.”

“What were you even doing out there?”

“Clearing my head, sorting things out… _Not_ raising the dead.”

“You’re still mad at me.”

“You can’t ask me not to be angry.”

“Yes, I can. Look, I’m doing it right now—please don’t be angry with me.”

A shadow of a smile flickered over Mello’s lips, and Matt counted that as win. They took a deep breath and sat back in their chair, cradling their cup of coffee against their chest. “I’m trying hard not to be. Mostly, right now, I’m confused. And I’d like if you could explain a few things.”

“I’ll try my best—I don’t understand some of what happened, either.”

“Like how you got shot in the head and didn’t die?”

“Among other things, yeah.”

Mello’s brows were furrowed, a sign of deep thought. Matt thought they were beautiful like this-- thinking through their own thoughts, caught up in the world inside themself. And he loved when he was a part of that.

“Do you have any theories?”

“They’re all pretty insubstantial.”

“I want to hear them.”

“… Okay, okay, yeah.” Matt ran his fingers through his hair and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I have two ideas; the first one is that shinigami are lazy shits and don’t follow through with taking people’s souls when they die of causes other than their name being written in the death note. So I got shot, I was supposed to die, but the shinigami didn’t give a fuck, so I didn’t. That’s the first one.”

Mello set down their coffee cup. “Frankly, that sounds like a load of bullshit.”

“I _told_ you it was gonna be bullshit!”

“What’s your other theory?”

Matt tended to avoid talking about things of the supernatural with Mello because he was never sure how they would handle them. The rosary that hung around their neck seemed to be staring him down, daring him to speak. Matt took the dare.

“Well, there’s a sort of curtain, right? Between life and death. And since I can communicate with spirits on the other side of that curtain, my idea is that… that maybe I can’t permanently go to one side or the other? Like I’m free to move to and from each side as I please.”

“You’re saying you don’t think you can die.”

“Yeah-- at least, not from unnatural things, like being shot in the head.”

Mello looked pale, dazed. “This is a lot.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” Matt reached over and took one of their hands. “Are you okay?”

It took a long time for Mello to answer. They seemed to be searching for the right words and being unable to find them—which was weird, because Mello was always talented at expressing how they felt. “It doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel like this is my body or my life. It’s like I’m living someone else’s.”

 “It’s probably just shock,” Matt said. “You’re gonna be alright, I swear.”

“What if I’m not? What if this is all some huge mistake?”

“Then I take full responsibility whenever we _do_ reach the pearly white gates, okay? Don’t worry about it.”

Mello met his gaze and Matt could have sworn that Mello’s lower lip was quivering. “Can you…“

They gestured over to themselves and Matt was on his feet in a second, pulling Mello into his arms and holding them close, keeping them safe. Mello dug their fingers into Matt’s shirt, clinging to him like he was their only source of stability.

“I’m still mad at you,” they said, their voice muffled.

“I know, I know.” Matt kissed them on the head and rubbed their back, following the curvature of their spine. “But I’m still happy that you’re alive and angry at me instead of dead. And nothing will change that.”

Mello didn’t want to let go, so they shifted to the couch. Matt cradled them in his lap, careful to avoid the burns on their face as he touched them, being as gentle as he could.

“I heard you.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was like I was sleeping, and you were telling me to wake up, so I did,” Mello murmured into his shoulder.

Matt just smiled and continued to hold them close, listening to the pure and simple song that was made up of their quiet breaths.

+         

It was hard to get out of bed. It was still hard to find feeling in their arms and legs, hard to move, hard to link their brain to their body. All the nerves had short-circuited and they couldn’t feel anything. They might have been more scared if this felt like it was happening to them and not someone else. They were strangely if not comfortingly detached… from being detached. This paralysis, this numbness, wasn’t something they were feeling; it was something their body was feeling, and they were not their body, this was not their body, they’re dead, they’re rotting—

“Mello?”

Green eyes. Red hair. “You look like a Christmas tree.”

He was laughing. They loved it when he did that, loved watching the grin spread over his whole face, loved seeing it in his eyes. They loved him. They loved him, and that was something they could hold on to. That was something that would never stop being real.

“I brought you some tea.”

“Not coffee?”

“Caffeine would not help you right now.”

“Tea has caffeine in it.”

“Chamomile doesn’t.” Matt set it on the bedside table. “It’s right there when you want it, okay?”

“Okay.”

Matt pushed the hair out of Mello’s eyes, and his fingertips brushed around the shell of their ear. “How’re you feeling?”

Weak. Unstable. Like their head was overstuffed with cotton, like all of their emotions and thoughts were on the tip of their tongue and threatening to spill out. Like the bed was going to cave in underneath them and they were going to plummet from this seventh-story apartment down to the street, like they would feel more in tune with their existence if they were a grease mark on the road instead of a whole person.

Except they weren’t. They weren’t a whole person.

They didn’t say any of this. They only said, “It’s like this is all a dream, and something is clearly out of place, and I can’t wake up until I figure out what it is. And the problem, Matt? The problem is the thing that’s out of place might be me.”

“You’re right where you’re supposed to be,” Matt promised. He was trying to look calm, but Mello could see it in his eyes. He was desperate. “You’re here, you’re alive, you’re with me.”

Mello moved one of their hands out from under the blankets, coming up to touch Matt’s cheek. “You’re here.”

Matt nodded. “Yeah, I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

+

Mello had been right in guessing that Matt had not thought this through completely, because flying back to New York as two people who had been confirmed dead was quite difficult. But apparently Matt knew a guy who knew a guy, and they were able to get past security and customs and everything with fake passports—except they weren’t fakes, because they had their real names on them.

Kira was dead. They didn’t need to hide anymore.

Getting back to New York wasn’t exactly the end of Mello’s problems. The knowledge that the case had been sealed without them had been severely detrimental to their motivation to live, which had already been shaky in the first place. But they wouldn’t kill themself, and Matt knew that, too; suicide was a sign of giving up, and giving up was not something Mello ever did.

They couldn’t distinguish what was reality; _nothing_ that had happened in the past couple weeks had made any sense, so things that could and could not happen got jumbled up in their brain. Not knowing what was possible and what wasn’t could do serious damage.

Sometimes it was so hard to connect their mind to their body that they couldn’t move. Half the time they expected death to catch up with them, for their body to start rotting, flaking away like the bark on a dying tree. Their eyes played tricks on them; they’d seen themself peel away, the flesh on their fingers melt away to reveal stark white bone. They couldn’t stop themself from screaming; Matt would hold them, clearly trying his damndest to protect them from whatever was hurting them, but once they started screaming, it wasn’t easy to stop.

They couldn’t bring themself to go to church. They wanted to, they craved the comfort that always came with stepping into a holy space, but they couldn’t bring themself to. They were supposed to die, and they hadn’t stayed that way. Life had flooded back into their body, and maybe that was some sort of miracle, but it was also an omen. The reason life was so special, the reason it needed to be cherished, was because it could end at any second, and once it ended there was no going back. Humankind was not meant to exist forever, wasn’t meant to crawl back out from behind the veil.

“What does this say about me, as a person?” They asked, staring blankly at the Manhattan moon outside their bedroom window.

“What does what say about you?” Matt replied, scooting closer to them on the mattress and wrapping his arms around them.

“That you brought me back so easily.” Mello twisted around to look at him. For a while, everything had appeared flat or distorted. The skylines would blur together and the sidewalk would sway beneath their feet, but the emerald in their partner’s eyes was deep and sharp and upliftingly real.

“Death is a natural thing,” they said. “It’s… it’s basically guaranteed for everything that’s alive. It _means_ something that death didn’t stick to me the way it’s supposed to. I don’t—I don’t feel like a person. I don’t think I have any humanity left in me. Everything that’s made me human is gone.”

Matt was silent, tracing the tiny freckles on Mello’s shoulder as he thought. Mello would never have guessed Matt had the ability to speak to the dead or bring them back—they would have pinned that sort of creepy thing on Near. But looking at him now, in this moment, they could see it; there was a rare quietness about him, a gentleness that couldn’t be replicated anywhere else. They’d seen him hold a gun, and his hands were calloused and rough, but his touch was feather-light. With a touch like that, Mello thought, it was no wonder Matt could pickpocket Death. It was almost angelic, in the most ominous way possible.

“Death didn’t stick to me, either,” Matt reminded them, kissing the delicate flesh on their neck. “I don’t think it means we aren’t human anymore, but if that’s how you feel—then fuck it, let’s be monsters. You and me, together.”

+

A part of them hoped it would get easier after deserting the need to be pure, that it would solve the hole in their chest and the disfiguration of their body that only they could see.

Most days were okay. Most days they took a few extra minutes getting out of bed, making sure they could feel all their fingers and toes, trying to link their mind to their body. Matt’s hand would linger on their waist as he whispered sweet nothings in their ear and they would smile against his mouth when they kissed.

It almost felt normal; if they didn’t let their mind wander, they could pretend that death hadn’t ever been something they’d known. It was always there somewhere, though, in the back of their mind, insistent on reminding them that their life wasn’t valid. Mello tried their best not to care, but it was easier said than done. After years of yearning for love from God, living outside that grace was alienating and lonely. But they still pulled through.

Some days, however… Some days were bad.

If they had the strength to get up, it was because the image of their rotting skin was fresh in their mind, and the sight of it made bile rise in their throat. Their self-hatred overflowed and they lashed out at whatever dared come too close, which was only ever Matt. His comfort didn’t reach them, didn’t stop their tears. The wires had been cut; a glass wall had been put up between the two of them, and it couldn’t be broken—only slowly lowered down as the panic subsided from Mello’s brain.

The whole world felt so far away, like they could stretch and stretch and never touch anything. It was like they were being punished for still being there by not truly being there at all. This world was a privilege; Mello had been denied that privilege.

Most days were okay.

It was a crisp February morning, and a thin layer of snow had dusted the roofs of the buildings overnight. The heater was on the fritz—again—so Mello had taken the bed sheet with them into the kitchen where Matt was brewing a pot of coffee.

“Aren’t you cold?” They asked, trailing their hand down the curve of Matt’s bare spine.

“Still sweaty from before,” Matt said, taking Mello by the waist and hoisting them up onto the kitchen counter. “You’re not?”

“I’m too pretty to sweat.”

“You’re hilarious.” Matt fit himself into the gap between their legs and kissed the tip of their nose.

Mello interlaced their fingers at the back of Matt’s neck, keeping him close, enjoying the warmth of his skin and the way his red hair tickled their fingertips. “You’re still beautiful when you’re sweaty, I promise.”

“Thank god, I was _so_ worried.”

Mello smiled—really smiled, not a shadow or a flicker of one, a real, genuine smile—and kissed him, loving the way they could feel his lips on theirs, loving his hands on their face, loving this moment, loving _him_.

A part of them would always be angry; that wasn’t something time or apologies could fix. Their death, their end, had been taken away from them, and that would never be something they’d stop grieving.

But this—these moments when everything seemed to fall into place, when they were at peace with themself, when they could think and feel with clarity, when they were being loved and loving in return—

That kind of made it all worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Out of the nothingness of sleep,  
> The slow dreams of Eternity,  
> There was a thunder on the deep:  
> I came, because you called to me.
> 
> I broke the Night's primeval bars,  
> I dared the old abysmal curse,  
> And flashed through ranks of frightened stars  
> Suddenly on the universe!
> 
> The eternal silences were broken;  
> Hell became Heaven as I passed--  
> What shall I give you as a token,  
> A sign that we have met, at last?
> 
> I'll break and forge the stars anew,  
> Shatter the heavens with a song;  
> Immortal in my love for you,  
> Because I love you, very strong.
> 
> Your mouth shall mock the old and wise,  
> Your laugh shall fill the world with flame,  
> I'll write upon the shrinking skies  
> The scarlet splendour of your name,
> 
> Till Heaven cracks, and Hell thereunder  
> Dies in her ultimate mad fire,  
> And darkness falls, with scornful thunder,  
> On dreams of men and men's desire.
> 
> Then only in the empty spaces,  
> Death, walking very silently,  
> Shall fear the glory of our faces  
> Through all the dark infinity.
> 
> So, clothed about with perfect love,  
> The eternal end shall find us one,  
> Alone above the Night, above  
> The dust of the dead gods, alone.


End file.
